Artistic research on colour design
Sunday morning Colour Talk with Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen
On Sunday Januari 22, 2023, our guest was Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen, a Danish designer, researcher and educator, passionate about design and especially about how we design. She is doing an artistic PhD about colour design and presented her work in progress.
There was no recording of the event on request of the speaker. But Maria gave us a special, very poetic video about favourite colours.
Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen is doing an artistic PhD about colour design and will present her work in progress. With the PhD project, she investigates how elements from classical colour theory and aesthetic theory of atmosphere can form both the basis for the development of an experimental and material-based colour design practice and the basis of a contemporary colour terminology using the notion of harmony and atmosphere as perspectives to analyse and discuss the designed colour combinations. In the presentation Maria will show examples of her colour experiments but also touch upon the challenge of conducting artistic research. The PhD project is funded by Independent Research Fund Denmark and situated in the Lab for Social Design at Design School Kolding.
“Coming from a background in classical design with a passion for form, colour, materials, aesthetics and craftsmanship and with no extended training in academic work, it is a key theme in my research to explore how I can attune a familiar process of designing products and solutions to a process of developing knowledge and in particular how traditional design methods can be adapted to research methods. I apply a constructive design research methodology in the ‘experiential tradition’ which is described as an epistemic practice where knowledge is generated from “experiential insights and objects resulting from design processes” (Gall Krogh & Koskinen 2020). The methodology allows the design researcher to deviate from objective scientific measurements and instead apply a first-person perspective and keep an openness in the process in order to capture situated and embodied experiences. This corresponds to the development within artistic research and autoethnography which also acknowledge insights coming from the researcher’s own subjectivity, voice, and experiences.” Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen
ABOUT
Maria Høgh-Mikkelsen is a Danish designer, researcher and educator. She is passionate about design and especially about how we design. Her expertise lies in the intersection between Colour and Material Design, Design Methodology, Aesthetic Practice and Education. She has studied Textile Design at Design School Kolding and Man & Well-being at Design Academy Eindhoven. She is currently doing a PhD at Design School Kolding where she has previously worked as Senior Lecturer.
For more about her work see a selection of projects on www.gemakker.com and the ongoing PhD project on www.kolor.dk. You can also follow her work on Instagram.